


Missing Ring

by quicksparrows



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 21:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4074991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chrom proposes to his beloved Tactician, but promptly realizes he's lost the heirloom ring he meant to give her... and who wants to announce an engagement with something as embarrassing as having lost the ring? The camp comes together to try to find it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missing Ring

**Author's Note:**

> Bless this ridiculous game and its tone issues and it's ~Original Character Do Not Steal~ goodness and its creepy stalkers and its absurd S-rank conversations.
> 
> [Update Aug 25th 2016; this work doesn't fit into the timeline I've loosely established for my other Chrom and Ada works.]

                He proposes.

                Ada’s about as surprised by this as she is delighted, heart thudding in her chest. Her best friend now fiancé, soon to be husband. They’re going to announce it in a few weeks, when they’ve had time to reach the Ylissean border again and make some preparations, but until then it’s their delightful little secret. If she were the delicate sort, she would swoon.

                "Oh god," Chrom says, suddenly. He's patting down his pockets, at first casually and then frantically.

                "What is it?" Ada asks. Suddenly, she’s more concerned than elated.

                "The ring," he says. "I completely forgot, I was going to propose _properly_ but then I got carried away and now—where did it go?!"

                A ring hadn't even crossed Ada's mind, but then again, she supposes the concept of a wedding ring means little in Plegia. Funny, how scraps of culture can stick with her, even if she remembers nothing of her life as a Plegian.

                "Calm down," she says. "There’s no rush! I'm overjoyed, but your words mean more than any ring."

                "I know, I know, but I think I..." Chrom pauses, hands clapped over his buttocks, pockets empty. "It's not here at all, which means it must have fallen out of my pocket..."

 _Oh,_ Ada thinks. _Here we go._ It’s never a simple thing with the two of them, is it? If it’s not awkward encounters in the bath or little trysts in the caravan or stupid bickering over that day’s battle, it’s just general stupidity with missing rings and thrown soap dishes and too-sentimental chatter—

                "I didn't even realize you had pockets in that thing," she says. "I mean... your pants are very… fitted."

                "Ada," Chrom groans, but he stops pawing himself in favour of looking at the ground around them. "We have to find it. It was a very important ring even _before_ I decided it would be your wedding ring."

                "Let's double back and keep an eye out," Ada says. "Maybe you left it in your tent."

                Chrom sighs miserably and reaches for her hand, lacing their fingers together.  His hand is rough but warm.

                "Sorry this isn't very romantic," he says, eyes on the ground. So are hers. "I hope you like it, though. It was made when I was born, my father kept it after my mother died. And now I have it, since my father’s death.” He pauses. “ _Had_ it.”

                "What does it look like?" Ada asks. "I mean, I can't wait to see for myself, but since we're looking for it, and all..."

                "It's in a little velvet pouch," Chrom says.

                "I bet it's—"

                "Blue?" they say, in unison. They both laugh, and Chrom squeezes her hand a little. They've never held hands before, but Ada likes it. 

                "Am I that predictable?"

                "Just a little," Ada says, fondly.

                "Well, at least it'll be easy to spot," Chrom says.

                But by time they are almost back to camp, there is no little velvet bag to be found. Chrom frets, and though Ada feels a twinge of disappointment, it's somewhat amusing to her that their luck would turn this way. He’s an unusual man, she’s an unusual woman, and god if they don’t make for an unusual couple.

                "Let's check your tent," Ada says, hopefully.

                To no one's surprise, Frederick intercepts them on the fringe of camp, and they drop hands as soon as they see him. He rides to them through the long grasses on his warhorse, fully dressed for battle despite the dry summer and empty horizons. Only Frederick would scout with a shield on his arm, Ada thinks, with both admiration and a little chagrin.

                "Where did you saunter off to, milord? Ada?" He asks, looking down at them. "It doesn't do to have our only lord and only tactician off unattended. What if there was an attack?"

                Chrom ignores Frederick's mother-henning with much-practiced skill.

                "Frederick, do you know where my ring is? The birth one, in the blue velvet bag."

                Frederick gives Chrom an appraising look.

                "It was in inventory yesterday evening, before I saw you personally remove it this morning," Frederick says. "Why?"

                Chrom looks surprised.

                "You inventory my personal stuff every day? I never see you do that."

                Frederick adopts his usual crispness, his pride at having the intricacies of his work noticed, but he does not smile. "Twice daily," he says. "I need not warn you what sorts of company milord keeps — pickpockets, shrewd merchants, those with no head for expenses and massive debts—"

                "I _know_ ," says Chrom, interrupting. "But more importantly, the ring fell out of my pocket somewhere and now I can't find it."

                Frederick looks thoroughly disapproving at this, and then he sighs: "I will mobilize the camp."

 

                 

 

**-x-**

 

                And so the camp is mobilized.

                “Why are we looking for a ring, exactly?” Gaius says, practically yawning at the same time. “Shouldn’t we be marching? Hunting game? I don’t know, with the war and all, it doesn’t seem like a very big deal.”

                “It is of great importance to Lord Chrom,” Frederick says, and he narrows his eyes at Gaius. “Do you have a particular interest in the ring going unfound?”

                Gaius shrugs, but he lowers the candy from his mouth as if he might get hit and choke on it very soon.

                “There aren’t many royal jewels I’m interested in,” Gaius says. “And even if I wanted the ring, I wouldn’t want you on my ass about it.”

                Frederick scoffs.

                “Just keep looking, both of you,” Cordelia sighs.

                “I’m surprised Frederick let it go missing,” Sully says. “He inventories practically every rock and tree we pass, how did he let a ring go missing?”

                Frederick scoffs again.

                “Don’t blame Frederick, he has a lot of things to keep track of,” Lissa chimes in. Her voice is distant – she’s halfway under one of the carts, her voluminous skirts flipped up to reveal her white leggings. “I would lose everything I own if he didn’t keep track of it all!”

                “Why do you travel with such fineries anyhow?” Panne says. She’s standing to the wind, nose in the air, eyes closed.

                “I’m sure _everyone_ here has at least one thing they keep with them for sentimental reasons,” Chrom says.

                “Virion has a whole tent,” Cherche remarks with a smile.

                “Those things are of great value,” Virion says. “And you’ll notice they are kept in fine condition; none of them are lost to the mud somewhere.”

                “I did not lose it in the _mud_ ,” Chrom says, pointedly.

                “You don’t even know where you lost it!” Vaike laughs. “You just decided to take your ring out for some fresh air today?”

                (There’s a sudden yelp as Lissa bangs her head on the underside of the cart, and Lon’qu is very red in the face when he tries to help her up and finds himself looking up her skirts.)

                “Vaike, how about you go look over there?” Chrom says, gesturing broadly towards the woods. There’s no reason it would possibly be there, as Chrom has never chopped or carried wood in his whole damned life, let alone the past day, but it’s worth checking. “If we cover ground evenly, we will find it.”

                Vaike laughs and wanders off, picking through the shrubbery lining the woods’ edge.

                “Do you think one of the horses or pegasus could have eaten it? Lovebirds chews on my dress sometimes when she wants my attention,” Sumia says. “Ooh, I hope not… that wouldn’t be good for them…”

                Chrom and Ada share a brief look. She hopes he knows that she won’t wear a ring encrusted with Pegasus poop, velvet case or not, but fortunately his look says the same thing.

                “What are you going to do if we don’t find it, Chrom?” Sully asks.

                “Uhhh, I don’t really want to think about that,” Chrom says.

                “This is the one that you were gonna give to your future wife someday, right? That’d be a drag.”

                Ada looks at Chrom with what she hopes is a subtle enough warning look, but she still feels herself going a little crazy. He proposed to her less than an hour ago, and that should be special, not done on the fly _– Hey, everyone, we’re getting married! But we lost the ring already. Please help._ She needs time to absorb, to plan, to figure out how to approach this and make it as special as can be!

                “Yeah,” Chrom says, and he laughs like an idiot. “It would be.”

                “Can we just focus on finding the ring?” Ada says, pointedly. She can feel Frederick’s gaze burning holes in the side of her head.

 

               

 

**-x-**

 

               

                After hours, there’s still no ring to be found, and people start to give up.

                “Maribelle,” Ada says, “I know it’s a hassle, but if you could please…”

                “I’m helping, darling,” Maribelle says, not even looking up from her nails, which she is filing with great care. When Ada glowers, Maribelle looks up and glances around the ground around her briefly. “Well, I suppose it’s not here.”

                “This is really important to Chrom,” Ada says, pointedly.

                Maribelle sighs and sets down the nail file.

                “You know, he should be satisfied that I’m deigning to look for it at all. Some of his comrades aren’t even trying,” she says.

                Ada sighs, too.

                “Point them out and I will make them.”

                “Henry, for one,” Maribelle says. “He caught a disgusting little toad by the riverbank and has been tormenting it all day. And Kellam… no, wait.” She pauses to look around them, squinting. “I suppose I haven’t even seen Kellam today, but Tharja and Nowi definitely aren’t looking. And I don’t see _Frederick_ on his knees in the _mud_.”

                Ignoring the quip about Frederick, Ada says: “Okay, I will speak to Henry, Tharja and Nowi. Can you please look?”

                “You’re taking this very personally, dear,” Maribelle says.

                “You’re finding a lot of excuses to not do your part,” Ada replies.

                Maribelle huffs and goes, as if this is some laborious request, and Ada scowls behind her back before going to find the slackers.

 

 

**-x-**

 

 

 

                Nowi takes a little bit of cajoling and a promise of a game of checkers later. Henry takes no persuading and just one promise of bodily harm. Tharja, she saves for last. She always saves any interaction with Tharja for last.

                She finds Tharja in the back of one of the covered wagons, squirreled away between some crates. The dark mage has made herself a very fitting little nest there, a great crimson blanket draped between two crates and a few pillows crammed against the siding. Tharja is curled up there with a heavy tome on her knees, and Ada watches her dark eyes flit up from the page to the intrusion as she pulls back the back curtain.

                “Come to find me, hmm?” Tharja hums, and Ada imagines there’s a smile hiding behind that book. It’s easy enough to guess from the rest of her body language, languid and satisfied, as though Tharja hoped it would be Ada to come find her.

                “Frederick got tired of pulling you out of your hidey-holes,” Ada says. “Come on. Come help look.”

                “I’m looking up a spell for you,” Tharja says.

                “If it’s like the last time, I am not really in the mood,” Ada replies.

                Tharja giggles, and then she flips the tome around so Ada can see. Ada sighs and crawls further inside, close enough to crouch in front of Tharja and peer down at the pages between her knees.

                “It’s a finding spell,” Tharja says, smug as ever.

                Ada squints to read, and Tharja shifts, keeping the book in place to not disrupt Ada’s reading but moving to press her side up against Ada’s. Ada ignores her, continuing to read even as Tharja combs a few fingers through her long turquoise hair. It’s intrusive, but it’s playful enough.

                “I tried something like this at first but I still need to improve on my dark magic,” Ada says. “Can you give it a shot?”

                Tharja nods, and she leans over the tome, long dark hair falling in her face. Her hands illuminate purple for a moment, sigils and signs in pure light flickering in the air, and then it’s dark again. A second later, a ring falls between the pages of the tome.

                Ada picks up the ring and squints at it. Somewhere outside, Sully is swearing very loudly.

                “Wrong one,” she says.

                “I know, I was just testing it with that one,” Tharja says.

                (“Damn mages!! I nearly lost my knuckle! Where the hell is my ring?!” Sully is shouting.)

                “Okay, well, it works,” Ada says. “Get Chrom’s ring, please. Without busting someone’s knuckle.”

                Tharja repeats the spell, but nothing shows up.

                “Ugh!” Ada groans. “Why didn’t it show up!”

                “Maybe I flubbed it,” Tharja drawls.

                “Tharja!” Ada complains. “This is serious.”

                “Maybe I’d do a better job if I had some motivation,” Tharja says.

                Ada doesn’t make any effort to hide her irritation. “I’m not doing _that_ again,” she says.

                Tharja sighs, as if beleaguered by this. “Why do you care so much again? It’s not like it’s your ring.” Tharja turns her dark eyes to Ada’s, and for a moment she stares while Ada tries to ignore her. Tharja presses, both verbally and physically when she sits even closer, hip up against Ada’s. “Is it?”

                “Chrom is my best friend,” Ada says. Telling Tharja of all people (and first, at that!) seems like dangerous ground to tread on. “What matters to him, matters to me.”

                Tharja pouts her lower lip, eyes turning back to the tome, and she grumbles as she works some new magic. Ada watches her, equal parts attentive and paranoid.

                “What will you do if you can’t find it?” Tharja asks.

                “I don’t know,” Ada says. “I mean, Chrom will probably be upset…”

                Tharja pauses, fingers outstretched with an orb of purple light in her palm. “I don’t really care what Chrom thinks… I want to know what you’ll do.”

                “Be disappointed, I guess,” Ada says. “He never showed it to me, so I wanted to see what it looked like.”

                “Seems awful sentimental of you,” Tharja says. “For a ring you’ve never seen that Chrom’s saving for his wife, anyway.”

                Ada sighs.

                “I think you could do a lot better than Chrom, for what it’s worth,” Tharja continues. “I think you deserve someone more like you. Someone who will appreciate you for who are you, who can appreciate the dark arts for their beauty, who will do anything for you or to be with you. But that’s just me.”

                Well, there went any pretense Ada has. She sighs, staring into the purple orb with a hope that the ring will appear at any second. With a hope that there’s some spell out there that could spirit her away from this heinously embarrassing situation, where she and Chrom can laugh about it and forget it ever happened.

                “Is it that obvious?” Ada asks.

                “To the rest of them, pretty much,” Tharja says. “But everything’s obvious to me.”

                Ada doesn’t say anything. Part of her mentally retreats to a place where she doesn’t have to think about Tharja watching everything she and Chrom do when they manage to sneak off together. The other part of her is thinking that the terrible romance book she borrowed from Sumia is now even less romantic with some lived experience under her belt. Who knew that having an obsessive stalker could be so uncomfortable?

                “Are you going to be weird about this?” Ada says. “I mean, I would like to think we are friends, with what we have been through, and the whole acting-normal phase, I like being your _friend_ , Tharja—“

                “You’re rambling,” Tharja chips in.

                “Yes, but say for a moment that Chrom and I are actually engaged now,” Ada trails for a second. “You wouldn’t go all…”

                “All what?”

                “All, uh, _vengeful_ on him, would you?” Ada finishes.

                Tharja gives a contemplative noise, and then, finally, says, “Probably not.”

                That’s good enough for Ada, frankly.

                “Thank you, Tharja,” Ada says, relieved. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

                Tharja looks begrudgingly satisfied with this praise, and with a clink, another ring falls between the pages of the book. Ada gasps and scrambles to pick it up.

                “Is that it?” Tharja asks.

                “I don’t know,” Ada says, “he lost it before he could give it to me.”

                Tharja sighs, then, letting the purple light fade to nothing and leaving them in the dimness of the wagon, Ada holding the ring up to marvel at its beauty and Tharja in moody silence.

                “This must be it,” Ada says, relieved. “See, that’s his birthday inscribed inside. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

                “I could make you a nicer one,” Tharja grumbles. “I could make you ten rings. One for each finger. And they would be made with magic, so that we’re tied together forever. You couldn’t be more than ten feet from me without being pulled back to my side.”

                Ada ignores her in favour of planting a kiss on Tharja’s cheek, and that shuts Tharja up entirely. When Ada gets to her feet and jumps out of the back of the wagon to go find Chrom, she leaves Tharja clutching her cheek with an utterly blissful look on her face.

 

 

 

**-x-**

 

 

 

                “Is this it?” Ada says, breathlessly, coming to a halt almost on Chrom’s toes and thrusting the ring under his nose. “Please tell me this is it.”

                “That’s it!” Chrom exclaims, and even though they’re in the middle of camp, he momentarily forgets himself with excitement. He fits his hands to her waist and lifts her, twirling her around like the lovestruck idiot he is. Ada just laughs, though it’s somewhat startled.

                “Oh my,” Virion says, loudly, and Chrom is just as quick to put Ada down.

                “Incredible,” Chrom says, as if it never happened. Everyone pretends it did not happen except for Lissa, who giggles. “Where did you find it?”

                “I don’t know, Tharja summoned it from wherever it fell,” Ada says, still breathless.

                “So where the hell is my ring?” Sully pipes up.

                “Tharja has it,” Ada says, apologetically, and then looks back to Chrom. “Excellent. We can move forward then, pack up camp and keep heading for the border.”

                “Since sunset is rapidly approaching, Ada,” Frederick interjects, “I think it wiser to wait the night out and leave in the morning. Unless, of course, you have a pressing need to get back to Ylisstol?”

                Chrom and Ada both laugh.

                “Of course,” Ada says, “Why didn’t I think of that? Of course. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

 

 

 

**-x-**

 

 

 

                “We should just say something,” Ada says, quietly.

                The rest of the camp is scattered, some still in the dining tent, others deep in chatter or tending to the horses or off on patrol, leaving Chrom and Ada in relative peace by the campfire. He sits on the ground back against the logs they’d dragged around in a circle, boots so close to the fire that errant ashes land on them ever so often, and Ada sits on the log properly.

                “I thought you wanted to make it official,” Chrom says. “And not distract people when we still have two weeks to go.”

                “I know, and I still do,” Ada says. “But I think everyone knows already.”

                Chrom looks up, eyebrows furrowed.

                “What?”

                “I don’t think we’re even half as subtle or sneaky as we thought,” Ada says. “And you, _Lord_ Chrom, wear your heart on your sleeve.”

                Chrom is contemplative for a moment.

                “Well, picking you up like that probably didn’t help.”

                She puts a palm to the side of his head and shoves playfully, and he chuckles. “Exactly,” she says.

 

                 

**-x-**

 

 

                “Ada and I are getting married,” Chrom announces, over breakfast.

                Ada stands at his side, smiling and wearing his ring on a chain around her neck – they’ll get it resized when they can visit the royal jeweler. She’s used to everyone looking at her, but generally it is for guidance on the battlefield, not as their future queen-by-marriage. It’s somewhat awkward, though not unbearably so.

                There’s applause and some cheering, and then, some laughter.

                “About time!” Sully whoops.

                Chrom laughs. “How obvious was it?” he asks. “Go on, gloat about it.”

                “Since that night you walked in on her,” Vaike says. “The entire camp heard that.”

                “Before that!” Lissa says. “He liked her the day we met her!”

                “If any dunce didn’t notice long before last night,” Maribelle adds, warmer than Ada has ever heard her before, “they certainly should have noticed when Ada started raving like a lunatic about the ring.”

                “I was not _raving_ ,” Ada says. “But if that’s what you want, I’ll make sure to rave next time you misplace your parasol!”

                “Do,” Maribelle says.

                “Well, then,” Frederick interjects, lifting his drink. “A toast to the happy couple?”

                Chrom lifts his drink, too, and so does the rest of the party. They all cheer again and toast to the upcoming nupitals, and Ada smiles a little wider when Chrom circles an arm around her waist. His ring is featherweight against her breast, but the tide of the war will turn, Ada knows, and perhaps then it will weigh a little more. For now, however, they’re to be married, and they have all the levity in the world.

 

 

 

 


End file.
